India does it!!!

When Australia was on the verge of losing to Zimbabwe , my GChat status message was - will it be a repeat of 1983? , but I had no inclination of what was to happen with the Indian team. All I had in mind was Zim Beating Aus in a first round match like in 1983. A week and a half later , it was India doing that 1983 Jig. India had beaten England , South Africa , Australia and Pakistan in a series of must win matches to win the inaugural Twenty20 World Tournament.

Some similarities with the 1983 World Cup.

It was a Team performance , with no major person standing out

One of the openers was the top scorer in both the finals (Srikanth and Gautam Gambir)

Just when needed , Yuvraj played a couple of Blinders just like Kapils 175 against Zim when India were down at 17/5

India had batted first in the finals and had managed a below par score. After a couple of wickets early on ,Imran Nazir threatened to get the game away before brilliance on the field stopped his innings short. Similarly - India made 183 in the 1983 finals and after a couple of early wickets - Richards threatened to take it away before , Kapil's Brilliant catch stopped his innings short.

1 comment:

Karta said...

Nice comparisons! However, this win probably has much more value than the 1983 win because of its young, less experienced team and the pressure and uncertain nature of the new format of the game.